Oregon is getting greener and greener each cycle.
Cannabis not only won big around the country on Election Day 2018, but also on a local level last week within states that had already legalized adult use marijuana, such as Oregon and California. As to Oregon in particular, a handful of cities voted to lift bans on recreational marijuana on November 6. Nearly all of them succeeded.
As we’ve previously explained, Oregon allowed cities and counties Read entire story

Start from scratch with your CBD product labels.
Since the beginning of the year, our firm has received a growing number of inquiries related to the labeling of cannabinoids (“CBD”)-infused foods. This legal issue is particularly confusing given the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) has yet to provide clear guidance for this category of products. This post aims to shed some light on the matter by addressing some of the Read entire story

Outside sales people can be a great tool to sell your cannabis product. They may be invaluable to your company. In Oregon, outside sales people may be exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements if certain requirements are met. Lately, we’ve seen more and more Oregon marijuana companies start working with outside sales people (sometimes called a “sales representative”, “account representative”, etc.) in order Read entire story

This series of posts has been exploring Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) proposed rules implementing Oregon Equal Pay Act and how it will affect cannabis businesses. Last week, I discussed what “work of a comparable character” means. The week before that, I explored what compensation is. This week, I’ll dive into the systems employers can implement to pay employees doing work of a comparable character different compensation.
The Read entire story

In 2017 Oregon passed sweeping Equal Pay Legislation. Towards the end of August, Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) issued draft rules implementing the Oregon Equal Pay Act. This series of post is exploring those new rules and how they will affect cannabis businesses. In my last post, I unpacked the definition of “compensation” under the Equal Pay Act and the proposed rules. This week I’ll discuss “work of a comparable character.”
The Read entire story

Today let’s talk about Matthew Price, the Oregon marijuana businessman headed to jail for tax crimes. This story got a lot of coverage when it broke last month, partly because it was the first known tax-related prosecution for a licensed pot business owner, and partly because Price was fairly well known in Oregon. He once sat on an Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) rules advisory committee for cannabis retail, and he owned three Read entire story

Back in 2017, the Oregon legislature passed equal pay legislation prohibiting employers from asking applicants about compensation history. The law is known as the Equal Pay Act. This law, like other employment laws, applies to cannabis businesses. The equal pay provision of the law goes into effect on January 1, 2019. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) was tasked with drafting rules implementing the Equal Pay Act and recently released Read entire story

. City cannabis licensing in action.
Recently, the City of Portland announced that it would lower cannabis business licensing fees. Most notably, retail license fees have been reduced from $4,975 to $3,500, in line with other license types. That is still too steep (especially considering the state licensing fees), and although the City has cleaned up its process over the past few years, it’s still redundant, unnecessary and Read entire story

Your license transition plan should consider employees.
You’re new to the Oregon cannabis scene and quickly realize you won’t be able to open a newly licensed cannabis retail store due to the Oregon Liquor Control Commissions (OLCC) pause on issuing new licenses that went into effect on June 15. But what about purchasing an existing retail store from a licensee?
It is possible to purchase a retail marijuana business and receive a license from Read entire story

Noncompetes aren’t always enforceable.
Marijuana has been legal in Oregon for about three years now. Employees with specialized skills are starting to jump ship and head to competitors. What do you do, as an employer, if a candidate for employment shows you a non-competition agreement they signed with their former employer? Typically, the former employer will go after the employee to enforce the non-competition agreement, but the former Read entire story

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that cannabis companies that fall victim to a data breach are required, under state law, to inform employees and customers whose data was compromised by the intrusion. However, not every stolen piece of information demands notification. This post further dives into these laws—all 50 states have now enacted breach notification laws—by addressing the notification requirements imposed by the State of Oregon.
Oregon Read entire story

We recently wrote about the new Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) rules for marijuana businesses, and observed that those rules were issued with the stated intent to stave off diversion of cannabis. In addition to its public-facing actions, we have seen an apparent shift in internal OLCC review policies and procedures. A few weeks ago, we covered the apparent adoption of new settlement policies. Today, we cover what appears to be increased Read entire story

What’s in YOUR employee handbook?
Even if your company is fully compliant with all OLCC-mandated marijuana laws and regulations, you can still expose yourself to legal pitfalls if you aren’t just as strict keeping up with state and federal employment laws. While the rapid evolution of corporate cannabis is evident in the news alone, you may not realize that state employment laws are just as volatile — and there are a lot of them.
As a Read entire story

Nuisance pollination can cause a row.
In recent posts, we’ve discussed cases where a neighbor to a cannabis grow sued the grower for nuisance, claiming that growing cannabis interfered with the neighbor’s use of their land. See here, here, here, here, here, and here. These lawsuits relied on the non-cannabis landowner’s claims that the federally illegal cannabis business caused harm because of odor, disruptive activity, and diminution of property Read entire story

…another Josephine County setback.
Poor Josephine County.
We have been writing on this blog about the southern Oregon county’s mounting frustrations with cannabis, its successive losses in litigation, and its most recent attempt in federal district court to submarine Oregon’s cannabis programs. We immediately identified this lawsuit as a “stunning overreach” and we predicted the county would lose. To that end, and just before the holiday Read entire story